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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24705871">Whole In Your Frame</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/AidaRonan/pseuds/AidaRonan'>AidaRonan</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Captain America (Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Author is fat, Banter, Blink and miss it enemies to friends to lovers, Blow Jobs, Fat!Bucky, First Kiss, First Time, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Rimming, Science Nerd Bucky Barnes, Shrunkyclunks, Tender Sex, Tenderness, Touch-Starved, some violent situations, touch-starved Steve Rogers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 10:21:59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>15,583</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24705871</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/AidaRonan/pseuds/AidaRonan</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When Fury tells Steve Rogers someone wants to study his blood, Steve is adamant about it being a bad idea. Until Bucky explains his true intentions. Now all that's left is to get to know Bucky Barnes and decide if he can trust him.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>79</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>789</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Fandom Trumps Hate 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Whole In Your Frame</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/amethystkrystal/gifts">amethystkrystal</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Thanks to Krystal for bidding on me for FTH and for having me write chubby nerd Bucky. &lt;3</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>To SHIELD’s credit, they wait a good year to bring it up. Steve is just off a two-week mission. He’s been to more countries in those two weeks than even well-traveled folks see in a lifetime. He’s dirty and bruised and sore and just wants to take a long, hot bath while the serum works away some of his hurt.</p><p>Maybe they thought bringing it up when he’s too tired to want to argue was the best approach. Their mistake. Even when Steve doesn’t want to argue, even when he’s bone-weary and just wants to watch something soothing on his phone and let heat and epsom salts sink into his bones, he’ll still sure as shit argue if the situation calls for it.</p><p>Anywhere. Anytime.</p><p>“Oh, and Cap,” Fury says after a very hasty debrief. Steve is literally halfway out the door, stopping and leaning on the frame when he turns back to listen. “We’d like you to report to the lab on Monday to have some blood drawn.”</p><p>Steve’s eyes narrow a hair. He remembers having blood drawn before—vials and vials of it after Erskine was…</p><p>“Why?” he asks. He’d been through all the declassified files from SHIELD’s founding. He knows Peggy chose to dispose of what remained of those samples to keep the serum safe.</p><p>“We’ve got a guy working on figuring out how the serum—”<br/><br/>“No.” Steve’s firm when he says it. Steady and unyielding as the ancient oak planted by the river.</p><p>“It’s not what you think, Cap,” Fury says. “He’s not—”</p><p>“No,” Steve says again. “Have a good one, Fury.”</p><p>“Cap, I can’t make you give blood and I wouldn’t try, but I can order you to report to the lab and at least talk to the guy about his research.”</p><p>Steve clenches his jaw until it aches, his teeth grinding together. He crosses his arms over his chest.</p><p>“Is there a time you’d like me to do that, <em>sir</em>?” Steve asks with a cock of his head. Across from him, Fury rolls one eye.</p><p>“First thing, Rogers. Enjoy your long weekend.”</p><p>Steve turns and leaves without responding.</p><hr/><p>The SHIELD science labs don’t look like something out of a sci-fi movie. The ceilings are tiled, and the floors are cheap easy-to-mop white linoleum. The equipment itself is pretty state-of-the-art, but it still sits on the same kinds of lab tables Steve has seen on visits to high schools all over the city—albeit a bit cleaner and with fewer things like “Todd Stevens eats butt” and “JF + JS 4ever” scratched into the top.</p><p>The fact of the matter is that even a lab with millions of dollars in its budget is still limited by what’s available to buy unless they have it custom made. And why order custom tables when you can spend that money on computers and microscopes and whatever else it is that scientists use in this day and age?</p><p>There is no formal reception area, but Steve has dropped off enough samples of possible biological agents and chemical weapons from villains-of-the-week that he knows Kelly-the-intern is the closest thing the lab has to a receptionist.</p><p>“I’m looking for Barnes,” Steve says, probably a little more curtly than he means to. He already hates this Barnes guy on principle for messing with things that shouldn’t be messed with. Trying to recreate what Erskine did has ruined and cost hundreds of lives.</p><p>“Laboratory seven, Mr. Captain Sir.” They attempt a salute, fumbling with a clipboard in the process, and that at least thaws out Steve’s mood a little.<br/><br/>“Thanks.” Steve smiles as warmly as he can manage and slips back into the hall.</p><p>His boots thud quietly on the linoleum, and he catches activity in the slit-like windows on all the doors. Bustling. Weapons development. Analysis. All kinds of attempts at creating antidotes and neutralizing agents to things they’ve encountered in the field and things they haven’t even heard of yet if anyone asks. In some labs, he catches stark white coats. In others, scientists are behind additional walls of glass, wearing yellow biohazard suits.</p><p>And then he comes to the door marked seven at the very end of the hall, pulls it open without a knock, and enters.</p><p>Compared to the others, it’s small. It’s about the size of Steve’s living room. U-shaped tables line the walls, and there’s room for two short lab tables in the center. At one of those tables sits a man in a white coat. He’s clearly been waiting for Steve, nothing but his phone in front of him when he looks up.</p><p>“Captain Rogers,” he says with a shy smile, getting to his feet. Underneath the coat, he’s large-framed, and he’s got on a white button-down printed all over with the silhouettes of dinosaurs. It’s tucked over a soft belly into a pair of bright red skinny leg slacks. His tie is red as well, as are the socks visible over the ankles of his shiny shoes. Steve meets his eyes—slate blue behind the thick black rims of his glasses. They contrast nicely with his rich brown hair, a little long and tied back into a bun save a few wavy strands attempting to escape and hang around his face.</p><p>He steps toward Steve, extending a hand. Steve doesn’t take it.</p><p>“I can save you some time,” Steve says. “I don’t have any interest in helping anyone try to recreate the serum.”</p><p>“Oh.” Barnes frowns. “I see. Fury said you might—”</p><p>“Glad that’s settled. Have a good Monday.” Steve reaches for the door handle.</p><p>“I’m not trying to recreate it,” Barnes blurts out quickly before Steve can leave. Steve pauses, looks back over his shoulder. “Please, just give me ten minutes.” Barnes is giving Steve puppy dog eyes. Or at least it sure seems that way.</p><p>Steve takes a deep breath in through his nose.</p><p>“You’re not trying to recreate it?” Steve asks, his jaw still clenched.</p><p>“God no, that would be a horrible idea.” Barnes drops back into his seat. “Or, well, in theory it wouldn’t be. More guys like you in the world wouldn’t be so bad based on what you’ve done so far. But that assumes we won’t get more guys like Red Skull in the process of trying to get more guys like you. That assumes the world is a perfect place where no one will ever steal it or infiltrate the program. Where the other people who get the serum won’t react poorly. Sometimes when you land on the perfect series of good circumstances for something to work out, it’s good to recognize that it really is the perfect series of good circumstances and that the universe is generally chaotic and it would be a big display of hubris to… You can sit down. If you want?”</p><p>Steve blinks at Barnes who bites his bottom lip.</p><p>“When I say recreate,” Steve speaks evenly, “I also mean literally anything that might lay the groundwork for someone else to do that work. Just because you won’t go that far doesn’t mean someone else won’t.”</p><p>“You know you can just ask me what I am trying to do, right? You don’t have to keep being so dramatic.”</p><p>Steve raises an eyebrow. Barnes raises one back. With a twitch of his lip, Steve takes the stool opposite Barnes.</p><p>“Okay, I’ll bite. What are you trying to do?” Steve asks.</p><p>“Isolate and study your healing factor only,” Barnes says. “Believe it or not, Fury doesn’t want the serum messed with either. He’s not stupid. I had to lay out a lot of contingencies and safety protocols just to get permission to work on this.”</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“Why study a healing factor that allows you to survive circumstances that would kill literally anyone who isn’t enhanced? Why isolate something that we know cures asthma, diabetes, scoliosis, immunodeficiencies?”</p><p>“So—”</p><p>“You might be sitting on the cure for everything, Steve. Everything. I’ve spent my whole life so far trying to cure just one single autoimmune disease. Just one. If there’s a way to separate your healing factor out from the rest of the serum, then I think it’s a path worth exploring, don’t you?” Barnes folds his hands together on top of the table, his left hand covered in a black glove, its thumb tapping against the tabletop.</p><p>“Lay out your contingencies and protocols.”</p><p>“Any sample I get, anything I derive from a sample, it all goes in there.” Barnes points to a safe tucked into one of the corners of the U-shape table. “Refrigeration unit. It’ll only open for me, and requires three-factor authentication. I won’t tell anyone which three factors, but the brightest minds at SHIELD have tried to hack into it and can’t without engaging the failsafes.”</p><p>“What are the failsafes?”</p><p>“If anyone who isn’t me tries to get in there, the system will release highly volatile chemical agents inside that combust on contact, effectively incinerating everything inside. I’ll be keeping my lab notes in a similar contraption with a different three factors. I’ll be using a typewriter and freehand to do those notes. No digital copies at any point.”</p><p>“And if they come barging into your lab without knocking?” Steve smirks.</p><p>“The door was unlocked for you, Captain.” Barnes pulls a remote out of his pocket and hits a button. Immediately, a large steel slab slides down in front of the thick wooden door, sealing the lab shut. “The walls are steel-reinforced from all sides. I won’t say no one could get in here if they really wanted to because bombs and aliens exist, but I won’t be working without sealing the lab. And if any alarms go off for SHIELD, even if it’s just a fire drill, protocols are that all research be put away immediately.”</p><p>“And what about you?” Steve asks. “What if I had a gun to your head and told you to open the safe or else?”</p><p>Barnes swallows and goes quiet. “There are things I could use as weapons all over the lab, but let’s be honest. I’m a scientist, not a trained fighter. And while I can think of ways I might fight back, who knows if I’d stand a chance? Sure, I’d do it, because I know if they want my research or even just your blood, they need me alive. But at some point they’re probably still gonna get the gun to my head, right? So the real answer is that I’d have to pretend that whatever fear I was feeling made me fuck up enough to activate the failsafes and hope that someone came to get me before I succeeded in really pissing off some very bad men.”</p><p>Steve looks at Barnes in his dinosaur shirt and bright red pants. Barnes looks back, his eyes flicking down Steve’s body to take in his everyday work uniform—black tactical pants, black boots, and a plain moisture-wicking tee with the SHIELD logo on the arm (this one in charcoal gray).</p><p>“What happens if you figure it out?” Steve asks, and Bucky beams and shifts on his stool.</p><p>“That’s why I’m excited that I’m getting to do this through this partnership with SHIELD and not some pharmaceutical company. Because if we can figure it out, if we can come up with a safe way of administration, then we’ll be able to release it. Of course it’ll be years to get through the process, but my goal is to find a way to release it at a reasonable price even if I have to do it myself. Miracle cure? You could charge millions if you were a greedy asshole trying to bleed people dry so you could jerk- well, you get the idea.”</p><p>“No please finish that sentence,” Steve says with a tight-lipped smile, and Barnes goes pink.</p><p>“Jerk off into a diamond-encrusted Fleshlight was what I was gonna say.”</p><p>“What’s a Fleshlight?” Steve asks, and Barnes puts his face in his hands.</p><p>“Pretty sure I’m not supposed to be telling national treasures about sex toys on the clock.” But he looks up, squares his wide shoulders, and explains very quickly. “It’s a silicone tube inside of a plastic casing that resembles a flashlight. You put lubricant inside of that tube and then use it to masturbate. Usually the opening is molded to resemble, an uh, appealing part of someone’s anatomy.”</p><p>“Huh.” Steve shrugs. “When the hell did the hand go out of style?”</p><p>“Pal, I don’t think the hand ever went out of style,” Barnes shoots back, and then his already-pink chubby cheeks get even pinker. “Oh God.”</p><p>But Steve’s laughing quietly. Because, shit, it might be the most human anyone has treated him since he came out of the ice. During the war, every other joke had been dirty. Now, everyone treats him like some ancient relic likely to be offended by just the word “fuck,” so don’t even dream of bringing up the actual act of fucking itself.</p><p>As though Steve doesn’t swear. As though Steve never crawls into bed with anyone.</p><p>Crawled, Steve reminds himself. He hasn’t brought himself around to doing any crawling since he woke up. He wouldn’t know where to start when everyone treats him like he’s…</p><p>He’s frowning now, the room gone quiet for too long. He looks back up at Barnes who’s tapping his gloved thumb on the table again.</p><p>“I, uh, think my ten minutes are up.” Barnes looks at the clock on the wall. “So what do you say?”</p><p>“Still no,” Steve says, and then before Barnes’s shoulders can slump too far, he adds, “For now.”</p><p>He watches Barnes’s eyebrows knit together, the wheels behind his slate-gray eyes turning.</p><p>“You don’t know me,” Barnes says.</p><p>“Exactly.” Steve stands up. “But I think you’re right. It’s something worth exploring for the kids like me and the kids who have it worse than I did and for everybody else it would help. But out of everything you told me, all your failsafes and contingency plans, the easiest way it could all go wrong would be you.”</p><p>“You’re absolutely right. So we’ll get to know each other then,” Barnes says, and then he levels Steve with a look and laughs softly, “’<em>No. For now.’</em> Christ, Rogers, you really are dramatic.”</p><p>Steve smiles at him and gives him his number.</p><hr/><p>Their first attempt at getting acquainted takes place at a planetarium. Not the one at the Smithsonian. Bucky—as Barnes has since asked Steve to call him—wanted somewhere smaller and quieter. Of course, he could also be luring Steve away from the masses to kill him, but (with Bucky’s permission) Steve had pulled his entire file from SHIELD’s databases, including his background check and every single record of his existence throughout time.</p><p>His only past “mistakes” were a few overdue library books. And, really, that he had a library record stretching all the way back to his childhood made it even less likely that he was some kind of spy. Although, he apparently did read something called <em>Harriet The Spy</em> several times as a boy.</p><p>“Hey Steve.” Bucky waves to him from across the lobby of the small planetarium, two programs in his hand. He dresses different outside of work. Instead of slacks and a button-down, Bucky’s wearing a three quarter length red henley and well-cut dark wash jeans tucked into black boots. While Steve approaches, he pushes his glasses up on his nose, the silver fingers of a prosthetic arm catching the light when he does so.</p><p>“I got our tickets already,” Bucky says, handing Steve a little paper ticket and a program. Steve opens his mouth to protest, but Bucky cuts him off. “Before you say something ridiculous, remember that SHIELD is paying for us to hang out.”</p><p>Steve shifts his mouth into a smile instead. “Good to see you, Bucky.”</p><p>“You too, Steve. Come on. You were almost late.”</p><p>“But I wasn’t,” Steve says, “late.” He falls in behind Bucky anyway, letting him lead him through the rows of seating under the domed roof. While they sit, Steve looks through the program, a simple black and white thing printed on yellow printer paper and folded in half.</p><p>“Two truths and a lie,” Bucky says quietly, and Steve glances over from reading about how, on clear nights, there will be telescopes after the main program for viewings of Jupiter.</p><p>“Huh?”</p><p>“Have you ever played two truths and a lie? We’re supposed to be getting to know each other.”</p><p>“Yeah, I’ve played it. That’s how we all found out Dugan was missing a toe and Jones was sweet on Carter, who was sweet on him back.”</p><p>“Peggy Carter? I thought…”</p><p>“No,” Steve says. “Or, well, I thought so at first and she did too. But I guess… Sometimes you think you meet the right partner, and then you realize that spark was just a spark. It’s like flint and steel. Not every spark starts a fire.”</p><p>“Meteorites,” Bucky mumbles, and Steve nods.</p><p>“Meteorites,” Steve says softly, looking down at his program again just to have something to do. He really would like to see Jupiter. Can’t say that’s something he’s ever done before. He glances at Barnes, then speaks quietly. “I stole a piece of my own history from the Smithsonian. My favorite baseball team growing up was the Yankees. I used to draw pornography for money.”</p><p>“What did you steal?” Bucky asks.</p><p>“Do you get to ask questions to figure it out these days?” Steve looks over at him. “Have they changed the rules?”</p><p>“No, I’m from Brooklyn too, Steve. If the Yankees is the true one, I legally have to beat you up.” Bucky shrugs. “I’m sorry. I don’t make the rules.”</p><p>“My mother’s cookbook. Recipes she wrote by hand, some that had been in her ma and pa’s families for years.” Steve turns the paper ticket over and over in his fingers. “Do you know how strange it is to feel like you’ve seen an item just a few months before, to expect to open it and see it look one way, but then all the pages are yellow and the pencil has faded and there are some words you can barely read that you only know because you read ‘em a hundred times?”</p><p>Bucky is silent for several seconds. Then slowly, and where Steve can see him, he reaches over and lays his hand atop Steve’s forearm. He squeezes once, but doesn’t pull away. Steve fights off a shudder and tries to remember the last time someone touched him who wasn’t a doctor or an enemy combatant.</p><p>“I can’t imagine what that must feel like, Steve. I doubt anyone can, but I am sorry it happened.”</p><p>Steve clears his throat once, then twice, before turning to Bucky with a forced smile.</p><p>“What, Barnes, not gonna ask about the porn?”</p><p>Bucky pulls his hand away and sets it in his lap, going quiet again.</p><p>“Nope. Because I think you really want me to ask, and you’re too fucking dramatic to just come out and tell me yourself.”</p><p>Steve raises both eyebrows at him for that, tilting his head to the side.</p><p>“That a challenge, Bucky?” he asks, settling back in his chair. “Okay then. The year was 1939 and no one would give me a job because—”</p><p>“God help us, there’s a monologue. Can’t even come right out and just tell me, huh?” Bucky elbows him playfully.</p><p>“Honestly it was weird,” Steve says, lowering his voice. “Tijuana Bibles. Lots of cartoon characters.”</p><p>“Yeah, people are still into that as a concept.”</p><p>“I mean, I didn’t care. Money’s money and as long as what you like ain’t hurtin’ nobody,” Steve says, catching his accent and imagining his old USO vocal coach spinning in her grave. “But when I drew things for myself… well, that’s probably crossing a line if I haven’t crossed one already. Actually, I didn’t think that truth through at all before I said it. Last time I played this game was with a bunch of soldiers. But you’re a coworker I guess. I’m sorry.”</p><p>“Steve, I had to explain Fleshlights to you at our first meeting. It’s not like you told me to get on my knees and blow you.”</p><p>Steve feels his cheeks go pink, the blush creeping down his neck and chest.</p><p>“But it’s probably good for both of us to keep stuff like that in check so we don’t make someone else uncomfortable,” Bucky says. “Apology sort of accepted if you’ll let me say sorry too.”</p><p>“Apology also sort of accepted, and you’re right.” Steve smiles. “Now truth and lie me.”</p><p>Bucky nods and looks down at his lap, fidgeting with his hands and pushing his glasses back up on his nose.</p><p>“I lost my arm in a car accident. I have two doctorates. I have a cat.”</p><p>Steve stares at the back of the chair in front of him, his brows knitted together.</p><p>“The cat?” Steve asks.</p><p>Bucky makes a noise like the buzzer on a game show.</p><p>“Cat’s name is Alpine. I have degrees in biomedical engineering and pharmaceutical engineering.”</p><p>“So what happened? Fist fought a robot? Shark attack?” Steve asks. “Fuck, sorry, is this a sensitive—”</p><p>“No, it’s okay. Before I got the prosthetic, I actually thought of tattooing a shark on it. Or a sea monster or something really cool.”</p><p>“Wait, was it a shark then?”</p><p>“No, oh my God.” Bucky elbows him again. “Sharks are cool as fuck and usually don’t enjoy human flesh. It’s boring, I guess. I broke my arm and needed surgery, contracted an antibiotic resistant bacteria at the hospital. They tried their best, but in the end it was the arm or, you know, the sweet embrace of Death.”</p><p>“That…”</p><p>“It sucked a lot at first and even with the prosthetic, it still does sometimes if I stop and think about it, but everything becomes your new normal eventually.”<br/><br/>Steve knows what that’s like. Until he stepped out of the Vita-Ray machine in a body that didn’t hurt, he hadn’t even realized how much pain he’d been in literally all the time. He’s personally glad he’d experienced it though even if he wouldn’t wish it on anybody else. He can take a beating now that maybe some other men in his place couldn’t. And if that makes him better at his job, at stopping the people who need to be stopped and saving the ones who need to be saved, then he supposes he wouldn’t do it any differently even if he had the choice.</p><p>“Is there anything you want me to know, as a potential friend?” Steve asks, and Bucky pauses to think that over.</p><p>“You can treat it like it’s my arm,” Bucky says. “Because it is my arm. Not everyone is as lucky as I am, so this definitely isn’t a universal experience, but my prosthetic is really advanced. I can feel pressure and temperature. And other than some pain from the weight of it and some occasional technical glitches that are, admittedly pretty shitty to experience, it works largely like a real arm when it’s at full function.”</p><p>“Thank you for telling me,” Steve says, and Bucky smiles at him warmly. “Now tell me about your cat.”</p><p>“It was right after the surgery actually. The adjustment period was terrible, and I was pissed off and depressed all the time. Plus, I was trying to catch up on my grad school work. Everything just felt like a big, shitty mess.” Steve wants to reach over, to take Bucky’s arm the same way Bucky had taken his. Like he used to with the guys and Peggy when they needed it. But he can’t seem to get himself to do it. He settles instead for letting his knee rest against Bucky’s, warmth blooming at the point where they touch. Bucky continues. “I was walking home from campus one afternoon when I heard this cry. It sounded a lot like how I felt at the time, and I just knew I had to figure out where it was coming from. Ended up finding him. Some bastard had put him in a box and taped the thing up on a day when the weather was supposed to get below freezing. He wouldn’t have even stood a chance at survival in a taped up box. What the hell kinda evil bastard does something like that?” Bucky takes a deep breath. “He helped me a lot, gave me a reason to get out of bed, to go somewhere besides campus and home even if it was just to the vet. I was gonna get him healthy and then find him a home, but…”</p><p>“You were his home.”</p><p>Bucky looks at Steve, smiling, his eyes a little misty. “We were each other’s.”</p><p>Bucky pulls out his phone to show Steve pictures, telling stories along the way. Steve’s about halfway through telling a story about a cat they encountered during the war when the voice comes over the speakers to inform them that they’ll be turning on the red lights to allow everyone’s eyes to adjust before starting the show.</p><p>It’s a very neat show that takes them deep into space to various possible homes humans could live on with the right technology. After, they wait in line for the telescope, and when Steve presses his eye to the lens and is actually able to see the bands of swirling gas that make up Jupiter, he feels something like wonder.</p><p>“Thank you for that,” Steve says, walking Bucky back to his bus stop. “I don’t think it’s the kind of thing I would’ve seen for a while otherwise.”</p><p>“Glad you liked it. I know this is more about trust than having a good time, but boring you to death doesn’t seem necessary.”</p><p>“Right. Plus if you bored me to death, then you wouldn’t get to do your research.”</p><p>Bucky snorts and takes a seat on the empty bench at the stop. “You’re an asshole. And that’s why you get to plan our next friendship outing.”</p><p>“You got it, Bucky.” Steve toes against his boot with his own. “See ya around?”</p><p>“See ya around.”</p><hr/><p>They’re actually at SHIELD for the next meeting. Steve’s doing pushups when Bucky pokes his head into the gym, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder.</p><p>“I’ve never been in here before,” Bucky says in lieu of a greeting. “The regular employee gym’s got less interactive obstacle courses and more treadmills.”</p><p>Steve hops to his feet easily, taking Bucky’s ensemble in. Today, his pants are a plain black, his shirt covered in a pattern of green plants, their biological name underneath each of them in a looping script. Bucky has chosen black for his socks and tie, the latter affixed to his shirt with a tie clip ornamented with a green enamel leaf.<br/><br/>At the sight of him, Steve’s fingers twitch, his mind already sketching lines and mixing paints that he doesn’t even own anymore.</p><p>“Come on, I’ll show you to the locker room.”</p><p>Bucky changes into black tights accented with neon yellow, and a matching loose-flowing tee with yellow triangles on either side. Worn running shoes replace his shiny black dress shoes, and Steve offers him some space in his own locker to stash his things.</p><p>“So, what exactly is the plan?” Bucky asks. “Please don’t make me run. I have a feeling I’d pass out trying to keep up with you.”</p><p>“You mentioned that you weren’t a trained fighter,” Steve says. “Obviously I can’t turn you into one in a day or even in a few weeks, but I can teach you a few things. A little self defense is always handy, right?”</p><p>He takes Bucky into another part of the gym and pulls mats from the wall to lay out for sparring. If Steve had really wanted to do this right, he would’ve asked Romanoff or someone from Strike to be here also, to demonstrate. But this was about getting to know Bucky, right? It was better if they were alone.</p><p>Steve shakes his head. Not a thread he needs to pull on right now.</p><p>“Okay, I’m gonna pretend to attack you, and I want you to defend yourself however feels right. You can’t hurt me in any way that’ll last.”</p><p>“I’d prefer not to hurt you at all,” Bucky says, but he’s already crouching a little. Anticipating.</p><p>“All’s fair in love and war and practice fights.” Steve lunges forward, and <em>crack</em>.</p><p>Blood pours out of his nose and drips down the front of his white SHIELD tee.</p><p>“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Bucky says, staring at his metal fist like it just sprouted its own head. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry.”</p><p>Steve starts laughing, quietly at first and then loud enough to echo up the walls, shaking with it even while blood pours over his hand. It hurts to laugh, but he can’t stop, and every time he thinks to himself that he needs to stop, he just laughs more. It’s not until Bucky tries to approach while looking like he just kicked a puppy that Steve finally snaps out of it. He takes a deep breath, reaches out so Bucky can take hold of one of his wrists.</p><p>“It’s okay, Bucky,” he forces out, his voice ridiculous and nasally when he talks. “I just need to.” Steve pulls his hand away from his nose and grabs the bottom of his shirt, bringing it up to wipe away the blood so he can check to see if he’s still bleeding. He is, of course he is, because he kept laughing so it hasn’t had time to stop. His left hand still held tightly in Bucky’s right, he checks to see if it’s broken.</p><p>“I broke Captain America’s nose.”</p><p>“Hell yeah, you did buddy,” Steve says. “Congratulations.”</p><p>“What the fuck? Fuck you.”</p><p>“This is gonna sound unpleasant, sorry,” Steve says, and then with a practiced motion and a grunt, he sets his nose back where it should be. Bucky cringes and then glares.</p><p>“Are you really apologizing to me, the guy who broke your nose, for how unpleasant—Christ, this guy.” Bucky finally lets go of Steve’s wrist so that he has both hands free to throw into the air. “I’ve changed my mind. I don’t wanna be friends. Being friends with you is gonna put me into an early grave. For fuck’s sake, Steve, come here.”</p><p>Steve steps closer, and Bucky gently, so very gently, pulls him into a hug.</p><p>Steve sighs before he can stop himself, his whole body melting into it. His next breath gets caught behind a lump in his throat, and he clears it aggressively. He can remember exactly the last time someone hugged him. Peggy, right before he got on Schmidt’s plane. Thirteen months plus seventy years since Steve has had a hug.</p><p>Until now.</p><p>Steve breathes deeply, both arms wrapped around Bucky. His hair smells like rosemary.</p><p>“Come on,” Bucky says softly, letting go and moving back toward the locker room. At the sinks, he wets a paper towel and slowly cleans the blood off Steve’s face. Every touch is soft, careful.</p><p>“You can have it,” Steve says, sometime after Bucky tilts his head back to the get blood off the underside of his nose.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Your samples. Anything you need.”</p><p>“Oh.” Bucky freezes.</p><p>“Just…” Steve puts his head back down to meet Bucky’s eyes. “I’d really like it if we could keep spending time together. If you want.”</p><p>Bucky puts two fingers under Steve’s chin and tilts his head back again, finishing his clean up job.</p><p>“Yeah, Steve, I’d like that.”</p><p>“Jupiter was really, really cool,” Steve says softly, aware now of the fact that Bucky’s standing between his legs, Steve sitting on the edge of the counter. It’s not making Steve hot and bothered to have him there, not like this. It’s just that Bucky’s so close, and Steve wants to hug him again so bad it feels like his muscles are screaming for it.</p><p>He doesn’t do it.</p><p>“I’m putting that I broke Captain America’s nose on my tombstone.”</p><p>Steve snorts.</p><p>“See, I did teach you something,” Steve nudges Bucky’s calf with his foot. “Now you know to throw a left hook if anyone ever tries to hurt you. Even if it’s just some asshole in a bar.”</p><p>“I can see why the history books say you’re an excellent strategist,” Bucky deadpans, forcing another soft laugh out of Steve. With a shake of his head, Bucky rinses out the paper towel and throws it in the trash. “How’s it feel?”</p><p>“All good.” Steve hops down off the counter. “I told you there wasn’t anything you could do to me that would last.”</p><p>“Feel up to giving some blood then?”</p><p>“I’ll change into something a little less Halloween and meet you down in your lab.”</p><hr/><p>It’s less than a week after Steve lets Bucky take six vials of blood when he gets a text.</p><p><strong>Bucky:</strong> spy museum tomorrow?<br/><strong>Steve:</strong> I don’t think Romanoff reacts well to people just showing up at her apartment.<br/><strong>Bucky:</strong> asld;fj<br/><strong>Bucky:</strong> so yes?<br/><strong>Steve:</strong> Yes.<br/><strong>Bucky:</strong> No more SHIELD sanctioned hangs tho so you’re buying your own [ticket emoji]<br/><strong>Steve:</strong> Not if I’m a good spy, I’m not.<br/><strong>Bucky:</strong> Lmaoo I do have it on good authority you once robbed the Smithsonian.<br/><strong>Steve:</strong> Twice.<br/><strong>Bucky:</strong> [eyes] Excuse me?<br/><strong>Steve:</strong> I stole a picture of her too. My ma.<br/><strong>Bucky:</strong> you are the most wholesome thief in history.<br/><strong>Bucky:</strong> [thumbs up] buy your ticket now btw. there’s only a few left for tomorrow. I assume you know how to work the internet?<br/><strong>Steve:</strong> [middle finger emoji]</p><p>They meet a little before 10 a.m. at a coffee shop down the road. Steve’s already working on a latte when Bucky walks in, the bell above the door tinkling and drawing Steve’s attention up from a newspaper someone had left behind. Behind Bucky, the morning sun is shining brightly and…</p><p>“Oh,” Steve says softly into the steam rising from his travel mug. Bucky has his hair down and parted to the side, brunet strands cascading down to his shoulders in soft waves that beg to have someone’s fingers through them. He’s wearing nicely cut jeans again that hug his massive legs down to his boots, topped with a heather gray tee that says “Cat Dad” in a bold white font, with cute little cats draped over some of the letters. If Steve squints, he can make out the soft flesh of Bucky’s tummy beneath the cotton.</p><p>Bucky sees him and smiles brightly before mouthing ‘coffee’ and making a beeline for the counter. It’s not long before he settles in front of Steve with a reusable tumbler, whipped cream and chocolate smashed up against the lid.</p><p>“Good morning,” Bucky says. “You figure out how the Internet works?”</p><p>“You think you’re cute, huh?” Steve gently kicks him under the table.</p><p>“No.” Bucky pushes his glasses up and tucks a few loose strands of hair behind his ear. “I know I’m cute.” He punctuates this statement by taking a sip of his frap.</p><p>“Got me there,” Steve says, and Bucky meets his eyes sharply, the purple straw of his tumbler still between his lips. It takes considerable effort for Steve not to look at them.</p><p>“Do I?”</p><p>For maybe the first time in his life, Steve bites his tongue.</p><p>At ten minutes til 10, they walk the rest of the way to the museum. It’s almost as cool as Jupiter, Steve thinks, while they look at a scale model of the Trojan Horse. And then they get to an entire display about Peggy, and he thinks it actually might be cooler. There’s one of her SSR uniforms—not the skirt one she’s so often depicted with in films, but the one with long pants and a utility belt. The same one she’d worn when she accompanied the Howlies in Northern Italy, because she’d had far too much intel to just relay it in a meeting.</p><p>There are other things. A tube of lipstick Howard made her that concealed a blade tipped in poison. Several knives. A copy of a cipher. They’d used a new one every week and rotated, taking out any that came into contact with the enemy.</p><p>There are newer items as well, things that Steve doesn’t recognize, and he reads every single information placard, including the giant one under a photo of her.</p><p>“Hell of a person,” Bucky says.</p><p>“Damn right.”</p><p>“Tell me something that’s not in the museum?”</p><p>Steve looks at her picture again. There are so many things he could tell Bucky. How she’d hauled back and decked Hodge the first time they’d met, and how that’d thrown some of those sparks that had burned so bright to see her take on a bully like that. That time in Italy when they had their hands on the Hydra goon they needed and the first thing Peggy did was shove a knife handle between his teeth before sticking her own fingers in there to get the cyanide capsule before he could bite it.</p><p>“There’d be no me without her,” Steve says. “Erskine always gets all the credit, and I’m not saying he doesn’t deserve a lot of it. He believed in what he was doing and he died for it. But after his murder, they had me selling bonds, which pretty much everybody knows. What they don’t know is I probably would’ve done that the whole war without Peggy.”</p><p>Bucky steps back, but he keeps looking at her picture, at the uniform behind the glass, the fabric faded with time.</p><p>“All the books and papers say I begged the SSR to send me Kreischberg and that they finally relented. Real hero stuff to beg to go into enemy territory, I guess. Only some old hard copy files in the SHIELD archives have the truth. I went AWOL because they were gonna just leave them there. The way they saw it, it would’ve cost more to attempt a rescue than what they’d already lost. I’m not saying they were wrong to do that given the circumstances—war means a lot of tough calls that are hard to live with at night. But Peggy reminded me that I was meant for something more than being a stage prop, and there was the perfect opportunity for me to try to do some good. I couldn’t have done it alone though. Peggy and Howard Stark flew me as far into enemy territory as they could that night, and the rest, well, the rest is mostly true.”</p><p>Bucky smiles at the story, and then they move on. When they get to another display, this one about the covert operations of the Howling Commandos, Bucky asks for more stories.</p><p>He gets them.</p><hr/><p><strong>Steve:</strong> Break my nose again tomorrow afternoon?<br/><strong>Bucky:</strong> fuck off<br/><strong>Steve:</strong> That really how you wanna talk to Captain America, Bucky? Disrespect a national icon?<br/><strong>Bucky:</strong> double fuck off.<br/><strong>Bucky:</strong> Sir.<br/><strong>Steve:</strong> What is it the kids say? Lmao?<br/><strong>Bucky:</strong> omg<br/><strong>Bucky:</strong> but if you really wanna teach me something besides how to freak out about breaking your nose, yeah<br/><strong>Steve:</strong> Meet me at 1. Wear something you can get blood on.<br/><strong>Bucky:</strong> …<br/><strong>Bucky:</strong> name the place<br/><br/></p><hr/><p><strong>Steve:</strong> Bucky, what’s a falafel?<br/><strong>Bucky:</strong> I never know if you’re serious or not, you know that right?<br/><strong>Steve:</strong> It’s an art form. I’m an artist.<br/><strong>Bucky:</strong> you’re a shit is what you are.<br/><strong>Bucky:</strong> meet me out front and we’ll hit the food cart around the corner?<br/><strong>Steve:</strong> Already out front. Wow, that means you’re late.<br/><strong>Bucky:</strong> [middle finger emoji]<br/><strong>Bucky:</strong> locking up your Wolverine blood and i’ll be omw</p><hr/><p>They’re somewhere far out of D.C. in the wilds of Virginia. It’s been three weeks since Steve let Bucky have his blood and nearly six weeks since they met. Since they’ve stopped hanging out for official reasons, they’ve had a coffee every few days and lunches on the days when they didn’t get coffee. There have been more self-defense-training spars, art museums, movies. A shopping trip where Bucky helped Steve pick out his first outfit that someone didn’t buy for him. (“Wow, you actually have a sense of style when you aren’t in SHIELD-issued old man khakis. Imagine.” “Very funny, Bucky. Also fuck you.”)</p><p>Steve’s maybe wearing that outfit tonight—dark wash jeans and a simple v neck shirt in a pale blue. Of course, no one can really see it since it’s nearly blackout dark in the field, only the occasional red flashlight from a group of other people in the distance to be seen.</p><p>(Bucky did see the outfit in the car though, not that Steve cares or anything. Not that Steve cares about how tight Bucky’s skinny jeans are or the cute gold foil stars and moons all over his tee or that he left his hair down in its long waves again.)</p><p>“Shit, did you see where I put the flashlight?”</p><p>“About six inches due east of your right foot.”<br/><br/>“Actual east or do you just mean right?”<br/><br/>“I…” Steve rolls across the thick blanket they’re both sharing and grabs it, slipping it into Bucky’s right hand and shuddering at the contact where skin brushes against skin. He’s getting better about not feeling like a puddle every time Bucky touches him. After all, Bucky touches him so often it’s like a second language between them.<br/><br/>But still.</p><p>“Thanks,” Bucky says, clicking on the flashlight and casting a red glow over their entire blanket setup. “Glad to be with someone who has the night vision of a raccoon. Handy.”</p><p>“Happy to be of service. I also have bat sonar if we ever need that.”<br/><br/>Bucky clicks off the flashlight and tosses it at him, missing by a wide margin given that he can’t see. It bounces off the blanket and lands somewhere near the cooler. “I’m done if you wanna look,” Bucky says.<br/><br/>“Oh.” Steve stands up and joins Bucky by the telescope, his bare forearm brushing against Bucky’s. They both shudder. Steve quickly files that away in a box labeled <em>D</em><em>o </em><em>N</em><em>ot </em><em>D</em><em>well</em> and leans down to press his eye to the lens.</p><p>“I’ve got it pointed at a spot where—”<br/><br/>“Oh!” Steve reaches out for Bucky’s wrist on reflex at the sight of a bright meteorite streaking across the top left of his field of vision. Nearby, he can hear a few oohs and ahs. “Do people still make wishes on these things?”</p><p>“Yeah, Steve, they do.”</p><p>Steve stands up straight again, staring at the night sky above. He’s pretty sure he sees another faint streak go by in his periphery, but it could be a his imagination or even a bug. Serum or not, his brain still plays tricks like everyone else’s. He glances over at Bucky who’s chewing on his bottom lip and looking in the general direction of where he’s got the telescope pointed. Beneath Steve’s fingers, still wrapped around Bucky’s wrist, Steve can feel a pulse beating away. He finally lets go.</p><p>He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t <em>want</em> to. (Shit.)</p><p>“Sorry,” Steve mutters.</p><p>“Huh?” Bucky glances back his way, then down at his arm. His fingers clench and unclench by his side.</p><p>Steve makes himself look away, focusing back on the sky and just how full of stars it is this far out of the city. Another streak, this one bright and impossible to miss. Bucky gasps softly and bends down toward the telescope, reaching out to find it with his hand first. Steve inhales and notes that the air smells like rosemary. He plops down on the blanket and leans back on his arms.</p><p>“You know why I like hanging out with you so much?” Steve asks, after several minutes go by. After so many wishes have been made by him and possibly by Bucky and likely by a lot of other people in the field where the C. Fisher Observatory is hosting the meteor shower watch party.</p><p>“My dashing good looks and charming personality?” Bucky jokes, carefully feeling out where Steve’s body is with his hands so he can join him on the blanket. Steve nearly loses his mind at Bucky, even briefly, touching his ribcage.</p><p>“That’s… part of it, I guess.” A glance in Bucky’s direction where he’s got his prosthetic arm resting over his soft belly, his other tucked up behind his head. Steve takes a deep breath. “For all these months since I came out of the ice, it’s been like people don’t know how to treat me, or like they got some notion of how they’re supposed to interact with me because I’m Captain America, that guy they learned about in history class, the one on all the propaganda posters from World War II to Vietnam to Iraq—and of course they think I would’ve supported those two wars, which…” Steve breathes in deep.</p><p>“I’ve had people apologize for swearing around me like I wasn’t in the goddamned army. Even putting outfits together for me and choosing khakis. You know what it’s like to realize that someone saw you and decided you were the human embodiment of <em>khakis</em><em>?</em>”Steve sighs. “I thought I was gonna hate you. I went down to that lab already hating you. But you weren’t what I expected, and…”</p><p>Another particularly bright streak flashes across the sky, the crowd letting out a significantly loud sound of appreciation and wonder. Bucky doesn’t make a peep.</p><p>“You treat me like Steve Rogers,” Steve says. “Even when you’re asking me questions only Captain America would have the answer to, you’re talking to <em>m</em>e. You see <em>me.</em>”</p><p>“I think other people see you, Steve.”</p><p>Steve shakes his head. “I think sometimes they’re starting to. But you were the first in this century. Taking me to the planetarium instead of, I don’t know, some war monument. To have my first boba tea? To see a movie about exploding cars?” Steve shakes his head. “You think anyone else would’ve brought me to a meteor shower watch party in the middle of Virginia at 2 a.m.?”</p><p>Bucky doesn’t say anything for several seconds.<br/><br/>“Calling Mad Max: Fury Road a movie about exploding cars is just…” Bucky swallows, then chews on his bottom lip. “You’re a guy worth knowing, Steve. Anybody who can’t see past a symbol and some pretty colors is missing out.”</p><p>Steve reaches over, slowly wrapping a hand around the metal of Bucky’s forearm and squeezing tight. He finds he can’t stop staring at Bucky’s mouth, that his heart quickens and migrates toward his throat when Bucky pulls his lip between his teeth again. Steve wants to—</p><p>Another loud round of appreciation snaps Steve out of it. He lets go of Bucky’s arm and focuses on the sky again.</p><p>At the first light of dawn, they eat fruit and yogurt out of the cooler, roll up the blanket, and hike quietly back to Bucky’s car. Steve drives while Bucky dozes against the window.<br/><br/></p><hr/><p>“I gotta say something, right?” Steve asks, looking up at his reflection in the mirror. There’s enough steam on the glass that it almost doesn’t feel like he’s talking to himself. “Could lose my first real friend in this century. Then again, if he’s really my friend, then… Fuck.” Steve scrubs a hand over his face and gets dressed.</p><p>He can’t stop thinking about the other night. About rosemary and chewed lips and stars and…<br/><br/>Hair still damp, Steve grabs his wallet and keys and jogs twelve blocks to the nearest art supply store, loading up on sketchbooks and canvases and all the things he used to covet and all sorts of new things he’s never even heard of before.</p><p>In the end, everything but the sketchbooks and pencils could have waited because he doesn’t have the patience to learn a new medium right now or to try and work with color when he never used to before. He gives his entire day off to the sound of pencil skkching across paper, to the smell of erasers, to the feel of paper crumpling in his hand when he does something he can’t stand to look at.<br/><br/>By the time he loses the light, he has several pages filled with Bucky. Moments, memories, things that call him to mind. There’s one whole page that’s just a sketch of a night sky with Jupiter in the center. There are comet tails. Peggy’s exhibit at the spy museum. The ticket booth at the indie movie theater.</p><p>Eyes, nose, glasses, mouth, hands.</p><p>Dinosaur shirts, microscopes, rosemary sprigs.</p><p>“Fuck.”</p><p>Steve shuts the book on his lap when sunset fades into dusk, then opens it one more time to write “talk to him, idiot” in the nicest lettering he can manage before shutting it again and picking up his phone.<br/><br/><strong>Steve:</strong> Coffee Monday morning?<br/><strong>Bucky:</strong> wanna try something new or are you Set In Your Ways?<br/><strong>Steve:</strong> Coffee’s coffee, pal. It’s you damned kids who are all about your artisanal foams and avocado fraps.<br/><strong>Bucky:</strong> ...<br/><strong>Bucky:</strong> Funky Joe’s. I’m too lazy to look up the address so you’ll have to manage that one on your own.<br/><strong>Steve:</strong> Gee. No one respects their elders anymore.<br/><br/></p><hr/><p>Steve wakes up two hours earlier than usual on Monday. He doesn’t exactly do it on purpose, but he blinks awake at 3:02 a.m. and can’t stop thinking about what he’s gonna say and how he’s gonna say it. So at fifteen after, he gets up and goes for an extra long jog, showers, then throws open his closet doors.<br/><br/>He has more clothes that he actually likes now, as though that shopping trip he’d taken with Bucky opened some dam that reminded Steve he’s not in the army anymore, that he’s not a poor kid from Brooklyn anymore, that he really is allowed to pick out some clothes he actually likes and wear them.<br/><br/>“Bucky, you make me a better… no.” Steve holds up two shirts in front of the mirror. He’s not sure that it’s helping him choose anything, but that’s what the characters always do in the pictures. The navy v neck does look better with his skin than the gray. Maybe. Steve squints at his reflection.</p><p>“Bucky, I’d sure like to lay one on ya, pal,” Steve mumbles, slipping on the navy v neck. Very nice with his gray boxer-briefs. Extremely fashionable. He grabs a pair of dark wash jeans in a straight leg and pulls them on. “Bucky…” Steve stares at his reflection for several seconds, sighs, and strips again. “I’m usually better at talking than this.”</p><p>Gray slacks. Pale blue button-up.<br/><br/>Steve stares at himself again. Not bad. For a job interview.<br/><br/>“Maybe I should go in my underwear.” Steve dives back into his closet.<br/><br/>Dark wash jeans again. Short sleeve navy blue henley.</p><p>“Bucky…” Steve turns to the side, rakes fingers through his damp hair. “A wise woman named Sarah Rogers once told me that we can’t rely on other people to make us whole. You…”</p><p>Steve takes a deep breath and clears his throat, fiddling with the hem of the henley. It’ll work.<br/><br/>Twenty minutes too early, Steve laces up a pair of brown leather boots and pulls up the directions to the coffee shop. He gets a latte and finds a table in the corner near the window, crossing one leg over the other and scrolling through Twitter on his phone.</p><p>He checks his watch every minute, sometimes watching the seconds tick by since he sure as hell can’t actually focus on or retain anything else. At five ‘til, he starts watching the sidewalk outside. Bucky is nearly always early. Not today though, it seems.</p><p>Steve checks his watch again at their usual meeting time, then checks it against his phone to make sure it’s not fast.</p><p>It is a new coffee place though. Maybe Bucky underestimated how long it’d take him to get there. At five after, Steve shoots him a text.</p><p><strong>Steve:</strong> Bucky?</p><p>At ten after, Steve tries calling. No answer.</p><p>At fifteen after, his phone rings. Steve’s heart skips.</p><p>“Rogers.”<br/><br/>“It’s Fury. You’d better come in.”</p><p>In a daze, Steve walks his coffee cup back up to the counter. His stomach’s churning on his way out to the sidewalk. It might be anything. It could be anything. It’s probably just a coincidence.<br/><br/>Probably.<br/><br/>Steve’s at a full sprint within seconds. He eats up the blocks between the coffee shop and SHIELD, moving at a brisk walk through the lobby where he contemplates taking the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator.</p><p>Even Steve isn’t that fast though. He steps inside, paces back and forth in front of the glass wall while he waits for the doors to open again.</p><p>Romanoff’s in a seat in front of Fury’s desk when Steve strolls in. When Fury looks up at him, Steve knows. He has to stop his knees from buckling.<br/><br/>“Fury,” Steve says, fighting to keep his voice even. “What’s going on?”</p><p>“About twenty minutes ago, we received a message from a group known as The Resurgence, a group of individuals, well… They’re Hydra’s own special version of Neo-Nazis. Practically worship Johann Schmidt. Their whole schtick is ‘transcending human limitations.’”<br/><br/>“What was in the message?” Steve asks, and it feels like he’s swaying on his feet while the entire world tilts on its axis one way and then another. To and fro like deep ocean seas, and Steve’s just sitting in a leaking rowboat, staring down a 40 foot wave that he can barely comprehend.</p><p>“They have Barnes and intend to keep him until either he or we give up his research.”</p><p>“Set up a drop off. I’m going to rip the—”</p><p>“That wouldn’t be wise,” Romanoff says, finally turning around in her chair. “Send the supersoldier in to deal with the group that wants to create an army of supersoldiers. You’re smarter than that, Rogers.”</p><p>“They can’t do anything if they don’t exist anymore,” Steve says through his teeth.</p><p>“Easy,” Romanoff says.</p><p>Steve has never once in life been capable of easing up and he sure as shit isn’t about to start now. Not knowing they have him.</p><p>“You can’t keep me from going.”</p><p>“Technically, Cap, I can,” Fury says.</p><p>Steve narrows his eyes at him. “Technically, sir, you can <em>try</em>.”<br/><br/>Fury gives him a stony look, then shrugs at Romanoff almost imperceptibly.</p><p>“We’ve got everyone we can tracing those videos back to the source. We’d prefer to send a team in unannounced instead of giving them time to prepare a welcoming committee. Go suit up. Hopefully we’ll be ready by the time you’re done.”</p><p>Steve suits up. He’s the first one back to Fury’s office, closely followed by Romanoff and Maria Hill. Fury doesn’t have the intel for them yet. So Steve paces the floor in front of the huge glass wall that overlooks the Potomac. Back and forth, back and forth.</p><p>Steve jolts when the phone rings, his entire body ready to spring. Fury picks it up.</p><p>“Yeah. Uh-huh. Got it. Good work, Klein.” Fury hangs up, then faces them. “The woods in Virginia. Satellite images show a metal building of some kind. Looks pretty small if they don’t have anything underground.”</p><p>Steve nods. “Send images and the location to—”</p><p>“Rogers,” Fury interrupts, “Hill’s taking lead on this.”</p><p>“Excuse me.”</p><p>“It’s obvious you’re too close to it,” Fury says.</p><p>Steve grinds his teeth together, then nods. “Agent Hill.”</p><p>“Right,” Hill says. “Location and images to the quinjet. We’ll work out the rest en route. With your approval, sir, I’d like Strike Team Alpha. Beta on standby in case it’s bigger than we thought.”</p><p>“So approved,” Fury says.<br/><br/>“Then let’s move.”</p><hr/><p>It takes the quinjet all of twenty minutes to get there, Hill hashing out a very quick infiltration plan with input from Steve, Romanoff, and Strike Leader Rumlow.</p><p>“Rogers, I want you with Rumlow infiltrating this back entrance,” Hill says, using her finger to rotate the map on the screen and circle the area in blue. “Rollins with me. Miller with Romanoff. Everyone takes a team.”<br/><br/>“Got it,” Steve says.</p><p>“Rumlow, I want Beta Strike surrounding the building and ready to move in. Take any stragglers into custody.”</p><p>“Copy,” Rumlow says.</p><p>“ETA two minutes,” Hill says. “Look alive people!”</p><hr/><p>Steve’s out of the quinjet before it’s even fully touched down, tucking and rolling across the grass.<br/><br/>“If that’s how we’re doing it,” Rumlow says before leaping after him, barrel rolling across the lawn. It takes two bashes of Steve’s shield to pop the lock off the backdoor. That gives Strike enough time to catch up.</p><p>“Covering you, Cap,” Rumlow says, gun at the ready behind him. Steve glances back, finds five more seemingly identical copies, all of their weapons up and ready to fire. They approach the first door leading out of the room they entered through.</p><p>Bucky’s in here somewhere.</p><p>It repeats over and over in Steve’s head. Not a soldier, not a fighter, not even an official SHIELD employee. Just a man. Steve throws open the door, tosses his shield at the opposite wall to see if it draws any fire.</p><p>The first spray of bullets comes from the left. Steve grabs his shield on the rebound, motions at Rumlow to fall behind him. Bullets ping against vibranium. Gunfire sounds loud in Steve’s ear while the team fires multiple shots around the shield.</p><p>Quiet. Ringing.</p><p>Then yelling in the distance.</p><p>“Move, move, move,” Rumlow says, and multiple feet fall into step behind Steve as they file down the hallway in a line. Steve throws open the first door they come across, does a quick glance inside.</p><p>Six heads turn Steve’s way, all of them looking up from laptops and cobbled together computer arrays.</p><p>“Any of you armed?” Steve asks. Six pairs of hands go up in the air. And then one goes for a quick draw. Steve is faster, the shield flying across the room.<br/><br/>Rumlow pokes his head in, gun raised. “Anyone else wanna try something stupid?”</p><p>A gesture and various Strike team members quickly disarm and cuff the occupants. They move on, pops of gunfire evident from elsewhere in the building. Another door. Steve takes a deep breath and turns the knob.</p><p>“Steve!” Bucky blurts his name out and is rewarded for it with a swift slap in the face from the woman standing over him. Bucky swears at her. Meanwhile, Steve takes her in, his jaw clenched while he assesses her.</p><p>She’s dressed in all black, her hair a deep onyx with an unnatural blue sheen. Her face is a series of sharp angles, like it’s carved out of stone meant to cut anyone who gets too close. Every angle of every line points to lips painted a deep blood red.</p><p>“Captain America, how convenient of you to come.”</p><p>Bucky spits blood on the floor, and Steve wants to run to him. Would run to him if the woman with red lips didn’t have a gun trained directly on the back of Bucky’s head.</p><p>“You won’t do it,” Rumlow says. “You do that, none of us have got any reason to let you keep breathing.”</p><p>“Rumlow, shut up,” Steve grits. He stares the woman dead in the eye. “What do you want?’</p><p>“You know what we want.”</p><p>“Yeah, well, good luck with that. You’d hardly be the first person to try reverse engineering me. It never works out if you hadn’t noticed.”</p><p>“You consider all of them failures then. The Red Skull. The Hulk. That’s because you’re blind to possibility. We consider them triumphs, Captain.” The woman smiles. “Humanity is weak. There are creatures on this planet that can lift ten times their weight. What can we do that compares? It’s time to transcend the boundaries of nature, take control of our destiny. Time to weed out the weak, to take evolution into our own hands.”</p><p>“You know, we had a word for people like you in my day.” Steve surveys the room as subtly as he can, keeping his eyes trained on her but focusing on the periphery. He just needs an opportunity. A way to get Bucky away from her.</p><p>“Did you?” she asks.</p><p>“Yeah, fucking Nazis.”</p><p>Two doors leading out of the room or to supply closets—Steve’s not sure. A fully set up lab table. A stack of blank papers and a pen.</p><p>“Our New World Order doesn’t care about your outdated morals, Captain. This world cares about one thing and one thing only: survival of the fittest.”</p><p>Steve holsters his shield and walks over to the lab table, picks up a needle and vial and some tubing. “You know, I don’t really know how to use this stuff. Care to show me?”</p><p>The woman doesn’t even entertain that with a response, sneering at him instead. She repositions the gun to reiterate that it’s still there. Steve sets the stuff down, makes eye contact with Bucky. His glasses are missing, his hair’s come loose from its bun, and there’s blood on his sunny yellow button-down, this one covered with line art of beakers and microscopes. Steve hates knowing that someone hurt him, hates it so much that he could lose himself to the rage if he let go.</p><p>“Steve, in case I don’t get to-”</p><p>“Shut up,” the woman spits.</p><p>Steve grips the edge of the lab table, his knuckles turning white.</p><p>“What do I have to do to get you to let him walk out of this room?” Steve asks.</p><p>“Get him to spill. Then maybe I’ll consider it.”</p><p>Steve nods. “Untie his hands.”</p><p>“He can dictate, I’m sure.”</p><p>“Do I look like a scientist to you? This isn’t a secret recipe for grandma’s chocolate chip cookies.” Steve picks up the stack of paper and the pen. “There’ll be formulas, notations, things I couldn’t even begin to write down. Untie his hands.”</p><p>The woman purses her lips and then reaches down with one hand to attempt to work on the knots. Steve can see the moment she realizes she won’t be able to undo them without both hands. The dilemma. She brings her wrist up near her mouth, speaking into a black cuff looped around it.</p><p>“Tatia, I need you in the lab,” she says.</p><p>As if on cue, one of the other doors bursts open. It’s not Tatia though. Romanoff doesn’t hesitate before she pulls the trigger, the Resurgence woman slumping onto the floor and cursing, her hand wrapped around her wrist. Steve rushes forward, rips the knots off of Bucky’s wrists and ankles, and hauls him up and away from her.</p><p>Bucky hisses.</p><p>“What is it? Did they hurt you? Do we need to get a medic?”</p><p>“Just twisted my ankle earlier trying to get away. I can walk.”</p><p>“Your glasses,” Steve says.</p><p>“Everything’s blurry as fuck, but I’ll make it.”</p><p>“You got this, Rogers?” Romanoff asks. “We need to clear the rest of the building.”</p><p>“Yeah, should be clear back the way we came. I’ll take Rumlow. Everyone else help Romanoff.”</p><p>Rumlow follows them out, down the hallway toward the exit. They almost make it.</p><p>“Just a little farther,” Steve says. “I’d carry you but— Rumlow, what are you doing?”</p><p>Before they can enter the last room on their way out, Rumlow steps in front of them, leveling his gun at Steve. Steve pushes Bucky away immediately.</p><p>“Afraid I can’t let you take him, Cap.”</p><p>“Rumlow, don’t be stupid.”</p><p>“<em>We thought the way was clear, Fury. It was an ambush. I tried my best, but there were too many of them…</em>” Rumlow smirks.</p><p>Steve can’t believe this. Then again, it would explain…</p><p>“You know, I couldn’t figure it out. This whole project was secret—high level clearance only, so how did some outside group find out about it?”</p><p>Rumlow laughs. “The call is coming from inside the house, Cap. You thought one little plane crash could kill Hydra? Cut off one head…” Rumlow smirks at him, then adjusts his grip on his gun. “Get on the ground.”</p><p>Slowly, his brain already mapping out how exactly he’ll break both of Rumlow’s knee caps, Steve starts to droop to the floor.</p><p>There’s a loud crunch before Steve’s even halfway down. The gun falls with a clatter, and Steve scrambles for it, flipping it around and training it on Rumlow whose nose is gushing blood all down his front. Eyes wide, Steve looks to Bucky. He’s clearly poised to throw another punch, his left hand balled tightly into a fist.</p><p>“Jesus fucking Christ,” Rumlow spits.</p><p>“Bucky, you…”</p><p>“Somebody once told me to hit with my left hand if I ever got into trouble.” Bucky unclenches his fist, the plates of his arm whirring. Steve pulls a pair of cuffs from his tactical belt and hands them to Bucky before leveling his gaze on Rumlow.</p><p>“Bucky’s cuffing you. You move an inch, I will kill you. And I ain’t bluffing. I’ve done a lot of shit that’s hard to live with, but one more dead Nazi won’t weigh shit on my conscience at night. Now nod and show me you understand.”</p><p>Rumlow jerks his chin down. Bucky cuffs him with little fanfare.</p><p>“Romanoff,” Steve says into the coms, switching to Russian. “<em>Strike compromised. Working with enemy. Trust no one.” </em></p><p>“Little late, Rogers. <em>And the scientist?</em>” From the sounds of it, she’s already in mid-fight. Steve looks over at Bucky. Per Hill’s orders, there’s another whole Strike division surrounding the building. How many of them are Hydra or Resurgence or both? Hell, is there even a difference?</p><p>“<em>Safe for now. Figuring out exit.</em>”</p><p>“Christ, your Russian sucks,” Bucky says.</p><p>“Rogers, w<em>here are you</em>?” Hill asks. Not Russian. French.</p><p>“<em>Almost out. Worried about beta.” </em></p><p>“<em>Stay put.</em>”</p><p>Steve moves Bucky into the back room and secures the door before situating him in a corner with a flipped over table for cover. Part of Steve wants to go back in, to help Hill and Romanoff, both of whom are hopefully not Nazis. Jesus, what if Steve’s the only non-Nazi? Then what?</p><p>He’s had worse odds, he supposes.</p><p>Gunfire pops everywhere, and Steve can hear it getting closer. Then closer still. Bucky reaches for his hand.</p><p>“They probably won’t kill you,” Steve says, squeezing Bucky’s hand tightly. “And they probably won’t kill me at least not right away. If we get captured, I will get you out of this. Lie if you have to, but…”</p><p>A loud knock at the door.</p><p>“Rogers!” Hill.</p><p>Steve leaps up and over the table to rip the door open. Both Hill and Romanoff spill in with a handful of other Strike agents, a couple of them taking shots down the hallway.</p><p>“Hold the door,” Hill says, and the Strike agents both point their weapons at it. Hill whips out a phone. “Rhodes, you remember how you owe me a huge favor? Yeah, well I’m calling it in.”</p><p>She’s not the only one making calls. Romanoff has her phone out as well.</p><p>“Barton. Stun arrows. As many as you’ve got. Dropping a pin now.”</p><p>Steve figures it’s his turn. He pulls out his phone.</p><p>“Tony. Suit up. Sending details.”</p><p>“Hold the room?” Hill suggests.</p><p>“Hold the room.” Steve nods.</p><p>It’s an agonizing hour and a half, and if Steve could go back in time and not break the lock on the backdoor, he’d sure as hell do it. Instead, they have to barricade it, and when that starts to fail, Steve has to hold it shut himself. They take a barrage from both sides—the occasional spray of bullets followed by someone yelling about potentially shooting the target. Then quiet. Then banging and pushing and more bullets and more yelling.</p><p>Every time Steve thinks he can’t hold the door another moment, he finds Bucky’s face and pushes through.</p><p>They know the calvary has arrived because every phone rings. Instructions are relayed that essentially amount to “stun anyone who moves.”</p><p>It’s Rhodes who gives the all clear to exit. Bucky gets a grand escort back to the quinjet, and with reinforcements, Hill and Romanoff go back in to clean up the rest of the mess.</p><p>Steve stays behind with Bucky. Hill ordered him to, but even if she hadn’t, he’s not sure he could’ve left him.</p><p>The first aid kit is where it always is in every quinjet, and Steve sets to work on patching Bucky up the best he can, dabbing at cuts with antiseptic wipes and blowing on them when Bucky hisses softly through his teeth.</p><p>“I don’t suppose you’ll stop working on it after this,” Steve says. “No reason to kidnap you if you’re just making new kinds of aspirin or weird paint colors or whatever.”</p><p>“I’ve isolated a string that I think might be the secret to your healing factor,” Bucky says. “So no.”</p><p>“You already figured it out?”</p><p>“No, not… I made progress,” Bucky says. “It’s like… if you had a lock. And you had all these boxes of keys to a million different things. And you found a box of keys and on that box of keys was a list of all the things those keys opened, and one of those things was your lock. But you don’t know which key in that box is the one that’ll open it. You just know it’s not in the other boxes. Probably.”</p><p>“I think I understand. Kinda.”</p><p>“Of course, sometimes locks take more than one key in more than one box and… this metaphor is kind of falling apart.”</p><p>“Bucky.” Steve wipes gently at a scrape on Bucky’s neck, leaning in close to see how bad it is.<br/><br/>“Yeah, Steve?”<br/><br/>“Back there, you-”</p><p>Bucky sways slightly in his seat, Steve’s arms instinctively moving to keep him steady.<br/><br/>“Okay?”</p><p>“Think having a bunch of people with guns kidnap me is catching up. Adrenaline is a hell of a drug.” Bucky scrubs over his face with his right hand and leans back against the wall, letting his eyes droop. “What were you saying?” he asks, yawning.</p><p>At the rear of the jet, the bay opens and Steve gropes for his shield just in case. But it’s Hill with Rumlow in tow. The others are right behind her with a swarm of captured Hydra and Resurgence members.<br/><br/>“We’ll talk later,” Steve says softly, making sure Bucky’s strapped in.<br/><br/>“Okay, Steve,” Bucky gives him a soft, exhausted smile.</p><hr/><p>Later ends up being a lifetime.</p><p>Later is figuring out exactly what to do with two dozen captured Nazis when SHIELD is compromised. Later is urging Fury to burn it all down and watching Hill and Romanoff set the gears in motion.</p><p>Congressional hearings. Logistics. Transfers of power. Questions and not all of them with answers.</p><p>It’s weeks of headaches and long days and short nights. It’s weeks where Steve can barely find time to squeeze in enough meals, let alone find time to have a conversation that deserves the time to be had properly.</p><p>He thinks of Bucky in every moment that isn’t occupied by everything else. He makes sure people he wholly trusts are keeping watch over him. He texts him when he’s waiting for another member of Congress to look him in the eye and accuse him of either weakening national security or perhaps being a part of Hydra himself.</p><p><strong>Steve:</strong> How’s the ankle?<br/><strong>Bucky:</strong> never better. already back to my life as a secret Hydra sleeper agent<br/><strong>Steve:</strong> Thought you didn’t watch Fox News?<br/><strong>Bucky:</strong> thought you didn’t either?<br/><strong>Steve:</strong> I don’t. I just have that bird app.<br/><strong>Bucky:</strong> that bird app.<br/><strong>Bucky:</strong> fuck you, Steve. you know it’s called Twitter.<br/><br/>Steve manages to smile for the first time all day, his lips twitching weakly. And then Senator McConley steps into the room and Steve puts his phone back in his pocket while squaring his jaw.<br/><br/>Later.<br/><br/></p><hr/><p><strong>Steve:</strong> You’re probably asleep, but that coffee place we were supposed to meet at kinda sucked.<br/><strong>Bucky:</strong> ts 3anm fuckoff<br/><strong>Bucky:</strong> ♥</p><hr/><p><strong>Bucky:</strong> There’s a kitten at the bodega. [image]<br/><strong>Steve:</strong> Quality content.<br/><strong>Bucky:</strong> jesus. you really are on that bird app</p><hr/><p><strong>Steve:</strong> What’s your address and do you like pizza?<br/><strong>Bucky:</strong> you’re asking that question just to fuck with me, right?<br/><strong>Bucky:</strong> and I know you know where I live. I might just be some nerd, but that’s exactly why I can recognize when the number of people in my neighborhood who have massive muscles goes up exponentially.<br/><strong>Steve:</strong> But can you see why kids love the taste of cinnamon toast crunch?<br/><strong>Bucky:</strong> I hate you so much.<br/><strong>Steve:</strong> I’ll be there in ten.<br/><strong>Bucky:</strong> no mushrooms</p><hr/><p>Later comes at 9 p.m. on a Thursday in the form of Bucky Barnes opening the door of his apartment. Just seeing him makes something in Steve settle, the weeks of stressor after stressor fading into a white noise that Steve can deal with some other time. Bucky’s in pajamas—black cotton pants covered in the Star Trek logo, coupled with a faded gray NASA tee. Bucky’s hair is down in soft waves that kiss his shoulders. Steve meets gray-blue eyes—framed by black-rimmed glasses—and his entire heart leaps into his throat.<br/><br/>Steve doesn’t make it inside before he’s got Bucky wrapped into his arms, leaning in until their lips are so close that they’re both inhaling the same air. Every butterfly in the world makes its home inside of him, overflowing his stomach and thrumming through his veins. Bucky’s exhales course across his cheeks.<br/><br/>“Is…” Steve’s about to ask as soon as he can find the words. But Bucky closes the distance, pressing his lips to Steve’s and snaking a hand around the back of Steve’s neck to hold on tightly. A quiet, desperate noise wrenches itself from Steve’s throat, like the sound of a machine that hasn’t been used in a very long time.<br/><br/>This is what it feels like to be home.<br/><br/>Steve melts into it, fully gone, forever gone. Steve thinks of the planetarium, of the edges of black holes, where time stretches out like taffy—on and on and on.</p><p>It doesn’t seem so bad. To be trapped in a moment like this for so many eons that it feels like forever.</p><p>Steve slips his free hand into Bucky’s hair, feels those soft strands that always smell of rosemary slide between his fingers and twine around them like tendrils.</p><p>When they part, they barely budge an inch. Steve leans his forehead into Bucky’s, beams when Bucky nuzzles tenderly against it.</p><p>I think I’m in love with you, Steve thinks.</p><p>“I had a whole speech,” Steve says, his mind a haze, his heart running at double speed. “For coffee.”</p><p>Bucky softly pulls him inside the apartment and closes the door, taking the pizza from Steve’s hand and sliding it onto the small island that divides the entryway from the kitchen.</p><p>Steve’s trembling. He realizes it when Bucky wraps fingers around his wrist, pulling Steve’s palm up against his cheek. One hand isn’t enough to touch him. One body isn’t enough to love him.</p><p>He cups Bucky’s jawline with both hands, swipes a thumb softly across his lips.</p><p>“A speech, huh?” Bucky asks quietly, leaning into Steve’s touch. “Let’s hear it then.”</p><p>“I don’t-”</p><p>“I wanna hear it.”</p><p>Steve leans in again, kisses Bucky once more.</p><p>“A-” Steve starts, momentarily losing the train when Bucky wraps his arms around him, holding him close and tight. “A wise woman named Sarah Rogers once told me that you can’t rely on another person to make you whole. But you can rely on them to draw a frame around the picture. To remind you that even if the image is a little blurry or faded, even if there’s a corner missing, even if the image was frozen in ice for 70 years and has been going through the motions of living and didn’t even realize that until it met you, it’s still complete and worth looking at.”</p><p>Steve swallows and clears his throat. He’s warm everywhere their bodies are touching. He’s warm everywhere they aren’t.</p><p>Steve falters. “I don’t feel the same as I did when I came up with this speech.”</p><p>“Then how do you feel now?” Bucky asks, his voice so soft.</p><p>“More,” Steve says. “So much more. You’re my frame, Buck. You remind me to be Steve Rogers. You remind me that I’m allowed to want things, to not want things, to try something new. You remind me that I’m allowed to feel joy and marvel and to wear pants that aren’t fucking khakis. You remind me that I’m allowed to be angry and enraged when someone I love is being threatened. And I want to keep watching meteor showers with you and getting coffee with you and texting you and I don’t even fucking know what with you, Bucky. I want you to put your cold feet under my ass in the winter. I want to be there for you when you need me and know you’ll be there for me when I need someone who really, truly knows me. Who sees the picture and gives a flying fuck about it.”<br/><br/>“Steve-”<br/><br/>“I guess what I’m trying to say is I love you.”</p><p>“Steve, you big fucking sap.” Bucky pulls away from him, just far enough to look him in the eyes. His face is so soft and tender. He holds Steve’s eyes. “I love you too, Steve. Have for a long time now.”</p><p>What else is there to do but kiss him again?</p><p>This time, Steve pulls him in close, pressing their lips together and wrapping his arms around Bucky’s back.</p><p>“Fuck, hold on,” Bucky says, leaning away just long enough to take off his glasses and abandon them next to the pizza. And then he’s back, his mouth against Steve’s. Tongues slip between lips, delicately licking and sliding. Fingers tangle in hair. Hands slip beneath shirts.</p><p>The touches aren’t urgent yet, just needy. Feeling. Grounding. Memorizing.</p><p>Until they aren’t.</p><p>“Steve, I want…” Bucky trails off, breaking their embrace and grabbing for Steve’s hand. He pulls him through the small studio apartment, past the sofa to where a king bed sits unmade under the window. “If you…”</p><p>His sheets and blankets are space-themed with stars and galaxies splashed across them in a whirlwind of color. Steve’s heart aches fondly, unsure of how it ever lived without knowing Bucky Barnes. In a quiet show of strength, Steve easily lifts Bucky’s large body and lays him down atop galaxies and nebulae, following him into the cosmos to re-join their lips together.</p><p>The urgency has made its way into each movement now, into each swipe of lips against lips, of tongues across tongues. Until it feels like they can’t get close enough. Until Steve wants to press them together harder and harder, to force a fusion that no one could ever undo. Beneath him, Bucky pants each breath.</p><p>Steve hooks his fingers under the hem of the NASA tee.</p><p>“This okay?” Steve asks.</p><p>“Yeah. Full enthusiastic consent, pal.”</p><p>“I wanna make love to you,” Steve admits bluntly.</p><p>“I want you to.”</p><p>Steve tugs his shirt up, revealing Bucky’s soft belly, covered with pale stretch marks and a smattering of dark hair. It’s rising and falling along with his chest. Steve leans down to kiss a group of freckles on his ribcage—all of them aligned like a tiny constellation whose name has been forgotten but was written on Steve’s soul long ago.</p><p>Opening his mouth, Steve traces the lines from one star to the next, his tongue trailing across the soft skin between. With a smile, he finally realizes he has a new use for the eidetic memory the serum granted him. To map and know every inch of Bucky Barnes, to never forget for even a moment a single part of him.</p><p>He finds another freckle, this one alone on Bucky’s chest, like the first star in the night sky before the others decide to join it. He trails his tongue across Bucky’s skin to it, tenderly kissing that spot before moving on to one of Bucky’s nipples. To circle it. To mouth at it.</p><p>Bucky lets out soft sighs that are so delicate and sweet and hot all at once that Steve feels like a powder keg thrown into an inferno. He keeps drawing them out with soft licks and kisses. Until Bucky’s squirming beneath him.</p><p>“Stevie, please,” he begs in a hoarse whisper.</p><p>“Yeah, Bucky, I’ve got you.”</p><p>Bucky’s hard within his pajama pants. Steve touches him through the soft cotton, forming his hand along the shaft and rubbing with gentle strokes. Bucky’s moan is like the opening note of a song that Steve first heard in a dream. It zings up Steve’s spine and settles warmly through his whole body. It’s as beautiful and perfect as the man who made it, so Steve pries out another. And when that’s not enough, he undoes the tiny button that holds the slit of Bucky’s pants closed and slips his hand inside.</p><p>“Where’s your underwear, Buck?” Steve asks, his fingers brushing against Bucky’s erection.</p><p>“Underwear?” Bucky pants. “In my own home? I thought this was America?”</p><p>Steve laughs softly, wrapping his fingers around Bucky’s cock and gently sliding his hand up and down the length, dancing his digits along the satin smooth skin.</p><p>Bucky huffs at him, then whines, “Steve.”</p><p>“Yeah, okay.” Steve takes his hand out and raises it to his mouth, then thinks better of it, letting it drop to the waistband of Bucky’s pajamas, slipping beneath the elastic and working them down until he can slide them off of Bucky’s bare feet. He drops them to the floor, leaving Bucky naked atop his space sheets, bare from his broad shoulders to his hairy tree trunk thighs, both bracketing Steve’s where he kneels between them.</p><p>“You might be the prettiest fella I’ve ever seen,” Steve says.</p><p>“Might?”</p><p>Steve reaches down and trails his hands up Bucky’s legs, letting one set of fingers continue up into the nest of dark curls around Bucky’s cock. Bucky’s hips migrate toward the touch. Steve gently pushes them back down.</p><p>“No might about it,” Steve says, knee-walking backward on the bed so he can lean his face over Bucky’s erection. This close, he can smell him. He can see the clear bead of pre-come threatening to run over. He darts his tongue out to catch it, then slips his lips over the head.</p><p>Bucky sighs long and beautiful. Like a farmer who spent all day in the field, sinking into a bath at the end of a very long day. Steve sinks with him, his lips moving farther down, farther down.<br/><br/>“Oh fuck.” Bucky moans from somewhere deep in his chest. Steve gives him a slow bob, up and down, then another until another sweet sound flows from Bucky’s mouth. He wants to make Bucky come like this. He wants to be inside of him. He wants Bucky inside of him in return. And how can one man want so much? How can he want so badly to burn and consume and be burned and consumed all at once?<br/><br/>He settles for another bob, deeper, his enhanced hearing zeroing in on every pretty noise Bucky makes. That’s Steve’s focus here, making this sweet boy feel good and loved. Over and over again.</p><p>Beneath him, Bucky writhes. Steve sucks him deeper, takes him in until he can feel him in his throat. In a way this feels like a mirror to who Steve is with the shield—loving men with his mouth is something Steve learned to do a long time ago, but he never had a man to love, someone to apply the skills to. It was training, he thinks now. Training for someone so perfect that Steve can almost forgive the ice and everything that got him here.</p><p>And then Bucky moans his name, “Steve” burrowing out from somewhere behind his Adam’s apple. In his jeans, Steve’s cock aches. He pulls off with barely a sound, planting a kiss onto one of Bucky’s hips.</p><p>“What? Why?” Bucky mumbles, and he sounds so sweetly confused that Steve falls in love with him all over again.<br/><br/>“It’s okay, Buck.” Steve gently slips his hands around the backs of Bucky’s thighs and pushes them up until he can see Bucky’s ass, pink and sweet beneath more dark hair. Steve doesn’t hesitate to taste it, dipping his tongue in and laving it sloppy-wet over Bucky’s hole.</p><p>“Oh.”</p><p>Another few rounds of his tongue, dipping it back into his own mouth only to wet it. Around and over, over and around, Bucky spread before him and glistening wet. Then Steve dips his tongue just inside the rim. Bucky whimpers.<br/><br/>“Steve, please.”<br/><br/>Steve pulls away, his eyes going to Bucky’s cock, neglected now, weeping.<br/><br/>“Come here,” Steve says, moving Bucky to the edge of the bed. Steve kneels on the floor between his knees, pulls one of Bucky’s massive thighs up onto his shoulder, and dives back in. In this position, Steve has his hands free, free to reach up and find Bucky’s cock, to stroke on it while he mouths his hole. Free to dip one of the fingers on his other hand inside. Knuckle by knuckle between so much licking.</p><p>Steve takes his time. He’s always had a talent for ignoring his own needs. He’s not important right now, not when there’s no need to rush, not when Bucky deserves to feel so good. One finger becomes too, wet with so much spit, crooked up and rubbing inside of Bucky with gentle pressure. Above him, Bucky’s falling apart, sweating, panting, moaning.</p><p>He’s so pretty Steve could scream.</p><p>“Steve, stop, please.”</p><p>Steve stops, removing his fingers with care.<br/><br/>“You okay?” Steve asks.</p><p>“Come up here. Please come up here.” Bucky opens his arms, and how could Steve refuse that? They end up twined together again, Bucky’s sweaty naked body pressed against Steve’s, their lips and tongues colliding once more.</p><p>“What the fuck is this?” Bucky demands halfheartedly, grabbing the hem of Steve’s shirt. “And this?” he asks, hooking his finger into Steve’s belt loop.<br/><br/>“Message received, Buck.” Steve stands up and pulls his plain sky blue tee off over his head, shimmying out of his dark wash jeans. There is, in Steve’s opinion, no attractive way to take off socks while someone is looking at you naked, so he leaves those on, crawling back up Bucky’s body, letting his waiting hands touch where they like while he toes them off and over the edge of the bed.</p><p>“Can you lay on your back?” Bucky asks, punctuating the sentence with one, two, three kisses that linger, before Steve rolls away, pillowing his head on his forearms. Bucky rolls the opposite direction, pulling open the drawer of the nightstand and digging out a bottle of lubricant, squeezing a generous amount onto his fingers. He crawls to straddle Steve’s hips, his fingers disappearing behind him, the flutter of his eyelashes and a soft sigh revealing their destination.</p><p>Steve stares unabashedly at his large frame, his soft hairy body, and the muscles of his arm and thighs. His sweat-damp hair curling with the humidity. Delicately, Bucky wraps the hand of his prosthetic around Steve’s cock, holding it still while he strokes the rest of the lube down its length. He positions himself about Steve, moving his arm behind his back to grip Steve again and keep his cock steady.</p><p>“This still what you want?” Bucky asks.</p><p>“More than anything,” Steve says. “As long as you do.”</p><p>With a gentle smile, Bucky lines them up and lets his body sink, taking Steve in inch by slow inch.<br/><br/>It’s Steve’s turn to moan, his eyes slamming shut at the heat and tightness of Bucky’s body. Encompassing him. There’s that taffy feeling again, the clock in Steve’s head slowing and slowing. How can one body be so warm?<br/><br/>And then Bucky moves, gently raising his hips, changing the angle, rocking back down onto Steve. They both moan. A two-part harmony. Steve thanks his memory again.</p><p>Steve won’t last long, too keyed up from every moan he’s caused and heard. Above him, Bucky keeps rocking, rising and sinking. Is this what it’s like? For the ocean to fall for the most beautiful ship upon its seas?</p><p>“I’m close,” Bucky manages, between pants and moans and groans that make Steve’s entire body sing. “Fuck, Steve, I’m so fucking close.”</p><p>Steve sits up, carefully bending at the waist so he doesn’t dislodge him, grateful for the body he has that allows him to move like this. He wraps Bucky up tight, feels Bucky tangle his legs around the back of him, accommodating the new angle, finding a new motion to rock into. Sweat-laden temples brush past one another’s, and Steve kisses his neck, sucking on the salty space behind his ear.<br/><br/>“You feel so good, Buck. Like coming home. Like being home.”</p><p>“God.” Bucky’s blunt nails sink into Steve’s back, his hips moving at a desperate frenzy.</p><p>“That’s it, Bucky. Take what you need. Anything you need from me, it’s yours.” Steve helps him, rocking his cock into Bucky the best that he can. One arm unwinds from around Bucky’s body, its hand slipping between them, gripping Bucky and rubbing up and down his length.<br/><br/>“Oh fuck, Steve.” Bucky leans forward, planting his forehead on Steve’s shoulder, his panting breaths coming quick and hot against his skin. “Oh, oh fuck.”</p><p>Bucky presses his open mouth to Steve’s bare shoulder and groans long and hard enough to vibrate up Steve’s neck. Steve knows what’s happening before he even feels the first drops of Bucky’s come spilling between them. Bucky shakes in his arms, continuing to let out deep moans against his skin while Steve fucks and jerks him through it, his own body poised to let go, holding on by a thread at every flutter of muscles around him.<br/><br/>It snaps before Bucky’s finished, Steve moaning into the open air, his cock twitching into Bucky’s hole.<br/><br/>He couldn’t have wished for a more perfect first time together if someone had written it into being. Gently, so gently, he lifts them both, helping Bucky off of him, holding him while his shaking legs find the floor. They aren’t upright long, Steve guiding them back onto the bed, finding Bucky’s lips and kissing him lazily for what could be five minutes or an eternity.</p><p>They tangle, sweaty and worn, unable to stop touching each other. Every time Steve thinks they might be done kissing, one of them gives in and they start anew.<br/><br/>When the sweat has dried, Steve finds the bathroom easily, taking Bucky with him to the shower where he loves on him all over again, wrapping Bucky’s legs around him under the spray, slow-fucking him against the shower wall until the only thing that keeps them from crashing to the floor is the serum flowing through Steve’s veins.</p><p>He washes Bucky’s hair and body after, nearly collapses when Bucky returns the favor, his fingers so gentle against Steve’s war-worn skin. Everything smells of rosemary by the time they’re done.</p><p>They head to the couch after, Bucky back in his Star Trek pants, Steve in a borrowed pair with a Trigun print. The pizza is long-cold, but it’s pizza so it doesn’t matter. What matters is that Bucky’s in his arms, both of them curled up under a Baby Yoda throw watching a recorded PBS special on the Voyager missions.</p><p>“Talked to Fury today,” Bucky says. “Still no idea where, when, and how I can continue my research.”</p><p>“I could rent you a space. Quiet partner who doesn’t want anything except for the world to be a little better and for pro-profit healthcare to fail.” Steve kisses the top of Bucky’s head. “I’m sure Hill and Romanoff could help us get it up to snuff on external security. And I’m sure Fury would sign off on you taking the equipment you already had at SHIELD. Anyone asked after it, we could blame the Nazis.”</p><p>“Stealing from the government, huh?” Bucky asks.<br/><br/>“Sexy, ain’t it?”</p><p>Bucky nestles in closer, his hair damp against Steve’s chest. Steve never wants to stop touching him ever again.</p><p>“Kind of fitting, I guess, if I have to have a partner for it to be you,” Bucky says, punctuating the sentence with the most adorable yawn Steve has ever witnessed.</p><p>“Guess so.”</p><p>They fall quiet after that, holding each other, occasionally seeking out each other’s mouths for a gentle kiss. At some point, they must doze off, because Steve wakes up to Bucky breathing deeply and drooling on his chest. The Voyager special has gone off, the TV back on whatever channel it was on beforehand, an infomercial playing. The cat Steve had forgotten about has apparently come out of hiding too, a white ball of fur curled up on Bucky’s thighs.<br/><br/>Making sure he memorizes every bit of the scene first, Steve gently reaches for the remote and switches off the TV, pressing a kiss to the crown of Bucky’s head before settling against the armrest.</p><p>Just before he droops back off the sleep, Steve lets the words pass his lips again in the quietest of murmurs.<br/><br/>“I love you.”</p><p>He thinks he hears Bucky say it back. But even if he didn’t, Steve still knows.</p>
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